Derek Hatton’s readmittance to Labour after 34 years in the political wilderness has caused disquiet among centrist MPs and party activists in Liverpool.
Hatton was expelled from the party for being a member of the Trotskyist grouping Militant. He was deputy leader of the Militant-controlled council which set an illegal budget in Liverpool in protest at local government spending cuts made by Margaret Thatcher’s government. On Monday it emerged that he has been told he can apply to become a member once again.
Despite the intervening decades, Hatton – who was viewed as the effective leader of Militant in Liverpool despite only being deputy council leader - can still prompt strong reactions across the city. The timing has particular angered centrist Labour supporters because it coincided with the resignation of Liverpool Wavertree MP Luciana Berger over allegations of institutional antisemitism.
One senior figure from Liverpool Riverside constituency, where some members are campaigning to unseat the sitting MP Louise Ellman, said members are bracing themselves for him to walk into a meeting. “We have been told he is joining our constituency, but we have not seen him as yet. His presence will result in more tensions, not less,” the source said.
Clare McIntyre, a Labour councillor in Luciana Berger’s Wavertree constituency, criticised Hatton’s readmission in what she described as a “toxic” atmosphere of misogynistic bullying in the party.
“I am worried because he did do a lot of damage in Liverpool but also in terms of the way he speaks about women, I think is quite misogynist,” she said.
Hatton, 71, suggested in a column for the Liverpool Echo last year that women who “cry rape” should lose their right to anonymity if the accused is found not guilty.
He has also written that if a defendant in a rape trial is acquitted “the blame should then be directed towards the accuser – usually a woman”. He later said that “after numerous discussions with female friends” he believed that blaming the accuser would simply deter rape victims from coming forward.
McIntrye said: “At the moment it is quite toxic in the Labour party and not enough is being done to support and protect women who are getting abused and we saw that with Luciana.
“His readmission just says to me that once again someone who can speak like that about women is welcome back in,” she said.
Several MPs tweeted their disapproval at the decision. Ian Murray, the MP for Edinburgh South, wrote: ‘talk about a slap in the face” shortly after the announcement. Tonia Antoniazzi MP wrote: “Shit day made even shittier”.
Shit day made even shittier 🙄 https://t.co/cC5bsCY7v6
— Tonia Antoniazzi MP (@ToniaAntoniazzi) February 19, 2019
To many on the left of the party, Hatton, known as Degsy, remains a heroic figure for standing up to Margaret Thatcher and refusing to implement cuts to balance the council’s budget.
It was a radical move that fitted with Militant’s slogan: “Better to break the law than break the poor”.
But for those on the right, he will be associated with confrontational hard-left tactics which resulted in a loss of trust with council workers and the public. He was denounced by the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock at the 1985 Labour conference in Bournemouth for using taxis to send redundancy notices to thousands of council workers.
“I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises,” Kinnock said. “You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma or code, and you go through the years sticking to that: outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council! – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers!”
“Liar!” shouted Mr Hatton from the audience.
Interviewed by the BBC on Tuesday, Hatton said it is “good to be back” and insisted he had “stayed absolutely solid for the Labour party” for 34 years.
Among his powerful supporters is Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool who has known Hatton for over 40 years.
Anderson said “things were different” in the 80s and that many Liverpudlians backed Hatton’s actions as they were “sick and tired of being kicked by the Tory government”.
But he added: “One of the things that he himself has recognised is those days are different to today’s political world. I’m a great believer that making mistakes doesn’t make you a bad person – there were good things that happened in the 80s and bad things, but they were done with the right intentions. Sensible socialism, that’s where I would class Hatton today.”
Hatton has been named as an outside candidate to run for Liverpool mayor when Anderson steps down after his second term next year. Asked whether Hatton was lining up a bid to replace him as mayor, Anderson laughed and said: “I don’t think Derek in his position has made any move or gesture towards standing.”
Peter Taaffe, the founding editor of Militant who was also expelled from Labour, said he hoped Hatton’s membership will allow others to return. “Let’s hope that the admission of Derek Hatton back into the labour party, means the doors are thrown open to all others who have been expelled for no other reason than standing up for the working class,” he said.
Taaffe was told by the party’s general secretary last year that he would not be able to join because he has been campaigning for Socialist Party candidates.
More than 11,000 leftwing activists were suspended from the party in 2016 over concerns on entryism. Most of those have now been let back in to the party following internal investigations.
Labour received no formal objections to Hatton’s application when a party sub-committee considered his application several weeks ago.
A Labour party spokesman said: “We don’t comment on individual membership statuses.”